BOOK REVIEW: The Ghost Bride By Yangsze Choo ★★★☆☆

Author Yangsze Choo is a fourth generation Malaysian of Chinese descent. After graduating from Harvard, she worked as a management consultant and at a startup before writing her first novel. The Ghost Bride has been nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature (2014), Shirley Jackson Award for Novel (Finalist) (2013), Goodreads Choice Award for Fantasy (2013) and Carnegie Medal (2014).

To summarise the plot without giving away spoilers, the main character Li Lan is a seventeen-year-old living in 1893 Malaya. She lives with an opium addict father who’s facing financial ruin. The first page reveals a proposition. The wealthy Lim family want Li Lan to marry their recently deceased son, Tai Ching. If she agrees to become his ghost bride, she can save her family from destitution. After a fateful visit to the Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor but also her desire for the Lims' handsome new heir, Tai Bai. Every night she is drawn into the Chinese afterlife - a world of ghost cities, paper funeral offerings, monstrous bureaucracy and vengeful spirits. With the help of the mysterious Er Lang, Li Lan must uncover the secrets of the ghost world before she becomes trapped there forever.

I haven’t read Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha (which I should) or Anchee Min’s Empress Orchid, but fans of those books set in oriental Asia will like The Ghost Bride.

I love the cover. It’s so pretty. I know, I know I shouldn’t pick up a book just based on its cover but I can’t help it! I think the star stealer on this particular story is actually the setting, not the main character or even the ‘who-dun-it’ murder inquiry. The infusion of all cultures in Malay 1893 is outstanding and Choo does an amazing job at capturing that setting, as well as the Malayan folklore and superstition. I felt quite immersed in the world Li Lan describes. The overall plot was fine and the characters suited the storyline.

Unfortunately, I just found the story really long and slow and that put me off. It was interesting in certain parts concerning Tai Ching’s murder and about page 164 when we meet Er Lang, apparently, a dragon turned clerk (I didn’t see that until someone pointed it out). It’s divided into three parts, but it felt as if the whole book was a dream sequence. I personally found Li Lan lacking in personality like she was this everyday character from the start and she just cried all the time. However towards the end, after she goes on a journey, she finds herself not to be the same again.

For a YA novel (with YA audience in mind) I think it’s a great story to get readers familiarised with different cultures. It’s a pass for someone much older reading this one. Nevertheless, I look forward to reading more of Choo’s works.

Rating 3.5/5
Publishers: Hot Key Books
Publication Date: August 1st, 2013
Genre: Romance/Historical Fiction/ Paranormal